Poster House - Brand Identity

Poster House is New York’s first cultural institution dedicated to exploring the impact, history and design of posters. Set to open in the fall of 2018, the museum will present rotating exhibitions and a permanent collection of international posters from all time periods and from around the world, examining how this ephemeral medium bridges art and design as an iconic and powerful method of visual communication.

Pentagram has created a dynamic identity for Poster House that treats the name as a moveable frame that immediately announces the content at hand. Set in a custom typeface, the two words of the name are placed along the edges of collateral and promotional materials, where they set off images and information and signal they are part of the Poster House programming, exhibitions or collection. The words are trimmed along their top or bottom, playing with the edges to suggest the layering of sniped posters or the crop of a full-bleed design.

Poster House is being guided by an advisory board that includes, among others, Pentagram's own Paula Scher; the design critic, author and educator Steven Heller; Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt; Nicholas Lowry, president of Swann Galleries; and Alexander Tochilovsky, curator of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography at Cooper Union. It will move into its permanent home at 119 West 23rd Street, which formerly housed TekServe, in the fall of 2018 after a renovation. The finished space will feature a screening room, gift shop, café and an on-site preservation facility.

In a nod to its location, Poster House will preview its activities with “Gone Tomorrow,” a pop-up exhibition opening in September 2017 that will present posters, handbills and ephemera for iconic New York venues that no longer exist.